An ideal culture of safety is the engine that continues to propel the safety management system towards the goal of maximum safety and health, regardless of the leadership’s personality or current commercial concerns. Such an ideal is hard to achieve in the real world, but it is nonetheless a goal worth striving for. The power of this engine relies heavily upon CONTINUING RESPECT for the many entities that can penetrate and breach the defenses. In short, its power is derived from not forgetting to be afraid.
In the absence of bad outcomes, the best way – perhaps the only way – to sustain a state of intelligent and respectful wariness is to gather the right kinds of data. This means creating a safety information system that collects, analyses, and disseminates information from incidents and near-misses as well as from regular proactive checks on the system’s vital signs. All of these activities can be said to make up an informed culture – one in which those who manage and operate the system have current knowledge about the human, technical, organizational, and environmental factors that determine the safety of the system as a whole. In most important respects, AN INFORMED CULTURE IS A SAFE CULTURE.
